Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Dudescape to Dadscape

Alls I gotta say is that the writer hit the nail right flat on the head. This was my favorite sentence:

When baby makes three, the abrupt lifestyle change spells an end to these spontaneous expeditions.

Age three is the magic number, and it's a dad thing, almost exclusively. Wives and women are cool checking with the singles, adjusting to the schedule, embarking on the same activities. But for guys, the party begins to end when the baby first comes, as you get used to changing diapers, feeding the baby, putting the baby to sleep, etc. The party completely ends at 3. You're no longer the same person. Dude, meet yourself.

Sure, I still go out for fight night when Lyoto, BJ, or Anderson is fighting. Sure, I'm still down for chugging a beer at happy hour. But the nature of the outings is different. You're now a dad, and that comes before everything else. You have very little time for anything else.

The author says at the end of the article that he's beginning to have more time now that the kids are playing among themselves. He no longer gets the "dagger eyes" when he leaves the house. I'm looking forward to that time. I've been a different person for about four years now, and my littlest one is just 14 months, which means that I probably have another 22 months to go. Maybe I can once again re-enter the world of men.

2 comments:

That's really interesting, though I have to say that in our case (and the case for some of my other daddy friends) this doesn't really happen until "2nd baby makes four." With our first one, I took her out with me to jazz clubs and bars with the guys as early as 5-6 months. Now with baby #2, it's going to be a bit more difficult, but we'll see what happens when the weather gets warmer.

I think I need to contact the author of the article to try and get them to talk to my wife directly. I need the secret to prevent the "dagger eyes", seems like the fact that kids can play together isn't enough to make it happen.